


The reception

by StAnni



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up, Self-Destruction, implied infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 23:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18486202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: But it doesn’t feel like a year.  If it was a year, really, he should have been further along by now.  He should at least have gotten up, dusted himself off.  He should at least be processing.  It’s not a year. It’s yesterday.





	The reception

The reception is in a grand hall on the Brakebills premises that Quentin never even knew existed.   
As Julia navigates her way towards the bar Quentin looks for the open door that would lead to the smoker’s balcony.

Outside the air is cold and the underbellies of rain clouds stretch heavy and dark for miles.

He doesn’t need to wait long. After only a few minutes Eliot comes out of the same doors, his hair a little bit shorter, wearing a dark blue suit, cigarette already on his lip.  
When he sees Quentin he stops, momentarily, before he continues outside, averting his eyes as he lights the tip of his Gualoises and slips the lighter back into his pocket.

“Hey Q.” He says, and Quentin nods quietly, finding somewhere else to fix his eyes – the maze – and allowing the silence to gather between them.

Out, beyond the lawns there is a flash of lighting and Quentin hears the words, awkward and dry, coming out of his mouth “Can’t believe it’s summer already.”

So yes, he’s upset. Still. He was wondering how it would be, seeing Eliot again – whether he would be able to just say something, anything, without the heat of anger, of despair making his throat thick. Now he knows. 

From the corner of his eye he can see Eliot shaking his head, lightly, and flick ash into the drawing wind. “It doesn’t feel like a year.” 

Eliot’s voice is velvet, and maybe even unaffected and it is beyond infuriating the way that he can comment, can chat back, like there isn’t a thousand corpses of dead, rotting elephants on this very same balcony. 

But it doesn’t feel like a year. If it was a year, really, he should have been further along by now. He should at least have gotten up, dusted himself off. He should at least be processing. It’s not a year. It’s yesterday.

“Margo here?” Quentin asks, and his voice is dull. He doesn’t really have the energy for Margo tonight, but he has missed her. Eliot’s eyes flick to his and just that moment of contact is enough for him to shy away, look over at the maze again. “She’s on a cruise.” Eliot says, and there is a little bit of an edge to the words – which is unexpected, so much so that Quentin turns his gaze back to Eliot – his dark lashes low, looking at the burning tip of his cigarette. “We haven’t spoken in a while.”

“Sorry.” Quentin says, because he does feel sorry about that. And in the way that Eliot marks his apology with a short, dead smirk and a shrug – he knows that the rift between Eliot and Margo probably has something to do with him, with them – when they were, almost for a minute, a them. And it’s not something he would have wanted, Eliot not having someone to talk to.

“I saw Julia inside” Eliot ventures. His voice is not as light as before, or maybe it never was, maybe Quentin is just projecting. “She’s still angry.” It’s an observation, cold and quiet – and Quentin knows that Eliot is not fishing for a contradiction or placation.   
So yes, Eliot is still raw too.

“How was the ceremony?” Eliot asks then and when his eyes meet Quentin’s there is a resignation there that is both sad and accepting. And for a second Quentin doesn’t trust himself to speak, presses back against the fucking tears rising for no reason other than to embarrass him.   
“It was fine.” He lies, because he could barely sit through it. True love forever – what a fucking invention. Even if it is Fogg’s problem today.   
What a bleak, shitty, scam.

His cigarette burns slowly and he can feel the wind picking up. A few feet away Eliot breathes in the cool air – his lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes closed and Quentin could level the whole building right there in that moment – could crater the whole fucking Brakebills in a split second. Instead he speaks, and his voice sounds cracked, like he is “You never apologized.” Quentin says. And you’re not supposed to tell other people how to hurt you, but this may be the last chance he ever gets to ask. “For…” And Eliot interrupts him, short, firm – “I know what for.”

Strip away magic, stick them in the middle of nowhere, give them an impossible task to do – and they flourish – they thrive and love and live together for fifty years.  
Put them in an apartment, give them all the luxuries of modern life, and magic too – and watch the world burn.

“I did you a favor.” Eliot says, quiet and clipped – so fucking, devastatingly sure of himself. And Quentin, done with the niceties, if there even ever were niceties, lets out an ugly, tired laugh because of course, of course Eliot would die on that fucking hill.

“That’s such a cop out, El.” He says, and Eliot not looking at him anymore, breathes a shaky breath – the plume of smoke obscuring his face for just a second. “As if I’m better off. As if you...“

And Eliot is kind, and wise and brimming with love – and even on the toughest days it is easy to forget that for as amazing and perfect as Eliot is, he will draw up his bridges and fill his moat with monsters at the first tremor of insecurity. Eliot can be cruel.   
“I’m better off.”

Nobody wants to beg someone else to hold their hand as the world crumbles – you want to just reach out and have that person, that one person, there – palm outstretched. Everybody wants impossible things

“We wouldn’t have lasted. Not as fucked up as we were. People break up, “ Eliot looks away then, and Quentin can see the tenure of his resolve, the desperate grip of it – it fucking hurts, impossible things. “I wish everybody’d just learn how to deal with it.”

He means himself too, that much is clear. 

And maybe Eliot did do Quentin a favor.   
Maybe they would have started fighting, drinking, ended up killing each other.   
Maybe coming home from a visit to his mom and finding Eliot in bed, in their bed, with a stranger saved him from walking in four years later, maybe after they’d already had a kid or something.   
Maybe in that moment of horrific discovery a ward clicked into place somewhere and it saved the world. Maybe he is, always will be, just cannon-fodder in Eliot’s war of self-destruction.

Maybe it was just, in the end, a crappy joke.

“Ever think about going back to Fillory?” Quentin asks, because even if he is a self-defeating, cheating, stubborn asshole – it’s still Eliot. It’s still his Eliot. Nothing changes that.  
Eliot sighs.   
And in that moment, in that second where he hesitates, Quentin sees it – the defeat.  
It breaks the deepest part of him to think that Eliot, once hopeful, probably went back, probably waded into that magical spring, ready to rise out repaired and renewed. And it didn’t work – for whatever reason, Fillory just spat him back out – possibly worse for wear.

So when he lies, Quentin lets it go. “I think I’ve had my lifetime’s quota, Q.”

His cigarette is long dead and he turns to go inside. He almost doesn’t hear it when Eliot says it. “Q. I still think you dodged a bullet.”   
And when Quentin turns Eliot’s eyes are clear, focused and dead-set.  
They are still two ships long passed each other, so far gone in opposite directions that there would be no going back   
“But I am sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Cannon-fodder.

Inside the air in the hall feels heavy and the sounds of eighties pop flood over him as Julia grabs his arm, gloriously oblivious and drunk as Eliot slips past them, heading for the door. 

“Come on Q!” Julia laughs and her fingers look warm and inviting – the hand outstretched at the end of the world. “Let’s dance!”  
He takes it.


End file.
